In rec.aviation.student Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
On Jun 23, 2:02?pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.aviation.student Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Certainly ?you do not expect the sky to remain off-limits to average
drivers forever. It is very likely, eventually, that something will
have changed to allow them into the sky.

Why not? I expect this. If people ever venture into the sky en masse it
will be in fully automated machines with all of the humans as mere
passengers.

The idea of millions of flying cars being driven around under the control
of average joes is a nice vision but I have no expectation that it will
ever happen.

Small aircraft under human control were, are, and will remain a travel
tool for wealthy people and recreation for the merely well-off.

I wonder if a similar statement was made about automobiles in 1900.

Quite possibly, but so what? Similar statements were probably made about
railroads too, and they would have been 100% correct. It's pointless to
talk about how wrong people might have been about cars, because that has
no bearing on how wrong people might be now about airplanes. To put it
differently, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they
also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

What's more, the comparison is completely bogus. In 1900, cars were new
curiosities that nobody really knew much about. In 2008, personal
airplanes have been available for 70+ years, and the airplane itself for
over 100. There is a lot of history and experience in airplane
construction and operation in 2008 that did not exist for cars in 1900.
And it all points toward no "flying cars" of the type where you strap in
behind some controls and fly yourself somewhere.

After all, cars can be dangerous too.

It's not about danger, it's about rates of technological advancement.
Computer technology is advancing much faster than aviation technology, and
there is no reason for this to change anytime in the forseeable future.
The computer technology for an autonomous aircraft will occur (indeed,
already has occurred for aircraft with limited capabilities and
in limited situations) long before the aviation technology for cheap
personal aircraft.

If air travel ever becomes as commonplace as car travel is today, I expect
it to happen with smaller fleets of pooled autonomous aircraft acting as a
sort of taxi service. The aircraft will cost far more than an automobile
does today, but being autonomous they will be easily shared and this
brings the cost per user down to a reasonable level.

But for short ranges I really don't see any reason for air travel to
supplant ground travel, and long ranges are already reasonably handled
with current techniques.

We must remember that there was a time when cars were being used
regularly while parents still took time to teach their children how to
ride horses with the expectation that horse-and-buggy would be the
primary means of travel for the foreseable future.

And most likely that skill came in handy for them, so I don't really see
what your point is.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon